If there was one wish actor Kwame Owusu Ansah courted in his lifetime, it was to become a pastor one day.

The multi-talented actor who was affectionately called “The African Child”, following a film of the same title he featured in, told Showbiz reporter Sophia Mensah in November 2006 that becoming a pastor was his passion.

He had infact made a promise to himself to become one before his life on earth was over. “I will feel empty in life and would consider myself as having achieved absolutely nothing if my dream of becoming a pastor is not fulfilled,” Kwame Owusu Ansah said in that interview.

He said that he had a zeal to preach the gospel and that he would want to use the opportunity and advantage to win souls for Christ. “God knows the desire of my heart to become a pastor and I know for sure He would give me the calling to be able to fulfil my big dream.”

As fate would have it, Kwame did not live long enough to realise his desire. He was involved in a motor accident on the Accra-Tema Motorway last Thursday night and died the next day at the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital in Accra.

According to reports, the actor was travelling alone in his Toyota Camry saloon car when he ran into a cargo truck ahead of him.

Whenever he played a pastor role in a movie, Kwame said he felt “very comfortable.” He added, however, that he could not force himself to become a pastor until he received a calling from God.

Born in Accra to Smart Owusu Ansah and Victoria Cosmos, Kwame is from Kumasi. He had his formal education at Koforidua Madonna School, then at Accra New Town Primary School, Pope John’s, Wesley Grammar, Abuakwa State College, and then to PRESEC, Legon, before privately taking a two-year diploma course in marketing.

Since Kwame’s future ambition was to establish his own advertising company, he enrolled at the Ghana Institute of Journalism (GIJ) to study advertising and public relations.

According to Kwame, after GIJ he taught Economics, Government and English Language for one year at Harvard College, Accra New Town, before working as a Postal Clerk at P&T, now Ghana Post.

All this while, Kwame was writing poems and reading them on air at the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC). On one of those visits, Getty Opare Addo asked him to venture into radio, because he had the qualities of a good presenter.

“I obliged and approached Charlie Sam who was the Head of Programmes at Radio GAR. He had just auditioned some people who wanted to be presenters. I passed the audition and started work at Radio GAR in April 1996. A few months later, someone left Garden City Radio so I was asked to take over his position in Kumasi.”

At GAR, Kwame co-ordinated radio programmes and the activities of marketing departments, arranging for contracts as well as taking on the duties of a full-time presenter.

Additionally, Kwame was a Public Relations Consultant for movie-making companies in Kumasi.

As a presenter at GAR on lunch time programme, Work and Happiness, he said he loved challenges and was never content till he got to the top of anything that he was doing.

That was how The African Child shifted some of his attention to film acting when men like Abbey and Zack Orji, Nigerian actors, advised him to give it a try.

Kwame said since then he had featured in about 60 movies, some of which are: 'A Stab in the Dark, The Visitor, Jewels 1&2, Time, Grace to Grass, Married to a Witch, Okukuseku 1,2 &3, Born Again, Axe of Vengeance, Spirit of Darkness, End of the River, Errors of the Past' and 'Wedding Day'.

Talking about the Ghana film industry, Kwame said there had been a lot of improvement and also thought that film actors and actresses now knew what the people of Ghana wanted and were doing exactly so.

“Everything you do, you have to look out for what your audience want and give it to them”, he said.